Franz von Stuck

Franz von Stuck was born in Tettenweis, Germany, in 1863. He studied painting from 1881 to 1885 at Munich’s art academy, then called the Königliche Akademie der bildenden Künste, and made his name as a draughtsman. He did not begin to concentrate on painting until 1889. At the international exhibition in Munich’s Glaspalast he was awarded the Gold Medal 2nd Class, and in the same year he sold a painting for 60,000 marks – as much as a craftsman might have earned in ten years. He was admired for his portraits, but he also painted mythological pictures in a Symbolist style. He made use of photographic studies in his painting. He was one of the founding members of the Munich Secession, formed in 1892. In 1895 he became a professor at the academy and designed the title page for the art and literature journal Pan, which promoted the ideals of Jugendstil. In 1897 he began construction of the Villa Stuck in Munich after his own design, and in 1900 the furniture he designed for the villa was awarded a gold medal at the Paris World’s Fair. In 1906 he was distinguished with the Order of Merit from the Bavarian Crown and ennobled. In 1909 Franz von Stuck exhibited seventeen paintings in a hall devoted to his works at the international art exhibition in Venice. Von Stuck died in Munich in 1928.